Wizard of Wor
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Description 

The player fights as a knight in different dungeons with magical projectiles against the monsters living there. The first monsters ("hellhounds") are still a bit slow. Suddenly appearing monsters get faster and faster and are partially invisible (but can be seen on radar). In later levels the player has to compete against the warlock "Worluk" and finally against the "Wizard of Wor". Furthermore, you have the possibility to fight with two against each other or against the monsters. 

The characters 
Image 	Name 	Points 	Note 
 	Burwor 	100 	Lion-like creature 
 	Garwor 	200 	Dinosaur, can get invisible and can then only be seen with the radar. 
 	Thorwor 	500 	Scorpion-like, can get invisible and can then only be seen with the radar. 
 	Worrior 	1000 	Player 1 
 	Worrior 	1000 	Player 2 
 	Worluk 	1000 	Hornet, added to the 1.000 points you will get double points in the next level. 
 	Wizard of Wor 	2500 	The Wizard of Wor can teleport. 

 Design 

All characters in the game are designed fancifully and the screen is well balanced in colour. 

There are only a maximum of six monsters and two player figures on the screen at the same time, which adds up to a maximum number of eight sprites. If a monster or a player figure is killed, it vanishes in an energy cloud. 

 Hints 

The game is played with joystick in port 1. In the two-player mode with each one joystick in both ports. 

The controls are intuitive, the pawn moves in the direction of the joystick and fires when pressing the fire button. 

The 2-player mode is activated by pressing the fire button on joystick in port 2. 

The entrances/exits on the side teleport the characters to the entrance/exit of the opposite side of the field, but also the monsters, which is especially fatal, if the player is currently standing exactly in front of this entrance/exit. 

From a dead Burwor emerges a Garwor and from a Garwor emerges a Thorwor. In the first six levels the number of newly appearing Garwors (and with this Thorwors) corresponds to the level number. 

The player who kills the Worluk and/or the Wizard of War will receive "Double Score". They appear when all other monsters of this dungeon haven been killed. If successful, the player gets the double score for each monster shot in the next level. 

The Worluk escapes through one of the exits on the side, if he is not shot beforehand. This is not so simple, as the Worluk moves faster than the missiles of the player. 

The Wizard of Wor appears at the earliest in the second level. A simple random generator decides if he appears. In average, he appears in one eighth of all possible cases. The Wizard escpaes when he shots the character or touches it. 

There are 25 different dungeons, divided into 15 with low, 8 with higher difficulty grade as well as "The Arena" and "The Pit". In levels 1-7 each a random choice out of the 15 easy levels is made, from level 8 on the random generator takes one of the 8 difficult ones. But the same dungeon is not chosen twice consecutively. Exceptions are the special dungeons "Arena" and "The Pit". The first one always appears in the fourth level, "The Pit" in levels 13, 19, 25, 31 and every further sixth level. Starting from level 97 even each second level is played in this dungeon; this stems from the fact that the level counter jumps back again to 97 after level 98. The dungeon "The Pit" has no inner walls so the player has to work fully with speed, lacking any possibility to hide. 

Before the start of the 4th dungeon ("The Arena") and the 13th dungeon ("The Pit") there is an extra life. 

 Cheats 

 The version by Remember offers next to the manual and the saveable highscore list also two cheat modes: unlimited lives and switched off countdown. 
 Pokes (not tested): 
Poke 10430,nn - (nn = number of lives) 
Poke 10435,nn - (nn = number of lives) 
Poke 16017,44 - (invisible)

Trivia 

Speech output 

Wizard of Wor is next to Gorf one of the few games, that support the speech output of the Magic Voice cartridge by Commodore. Wizard of Wor expands the vocabulary of the cartridge with some words referring to the game. The following sentences spoken with a tinny computer voice can be heard during the game (if a Magic Voice is plugged in): 
 Garwor and Thorwor become invisible! Hahahaha! 
 Now you get the heavyweights! Hahahaha! 
 I'm the Wizard, not you! 

etc...

Reflexion in pop culture 

The German Minimal/Electro group Welle: Erdball has dedicated the song of the same name on their CD "Ich bin aus Plastik" (I am made of plastic) to the game.


http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Wizard_of_Wor
